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Jill Maschio, PhD
Part 4: What Makes Us Human?: My Concluding Remarks
After reading literary works by computer scientists and futurists, it seems that some authors are perhaps trying to grasp what it means to be human (See SingularityAI’s mission). In my final remarks on this topic, I will try to illustrate what it means to be human.
In the movie Cast Away, with Tom Hanks as Chuck and Hellen Hunt as Kelly, Chuck survives an airplane crash but is stranded on a deserted island for over four years. He is separated by water from the love of his life, Kelly. As time passes, he gets lonelier by the day and craves human interaction, touch, and emotional connections. One day, some boxes that were aboard the airplane wash up on shore, and he opens them. One of the boxes has a Wilson-made soccer ball. Out of his need for human connection, he makes Wilson his friend. Making his way out to sea while trying to get saved, he loses Wilson, and it is devasting for him. He has nothing else in life to connect with, and he sinks further into depression.
The movie captures our human side. We are driven by psychological needs such as love and social connection, which creates psychological pressure that we seek to reduce. We long to be held and touched by others, and we long to hold them. Sometimes, we feel as though we have no power or control over our lives, but hope is around the corner – it is fleeting. We fight, have struggles, survive, and love. Movies and music inspire us. We dream about and plan for the future. We set goals and feel proud when we reach them and discouraged when we do not. These things make us human.
We are also driven by time, our perceptions of dying and death, to seek meaning in life, and to avoid feeling guilt and shame or feeling like giving up. These types of needs create motivation that influences our thoughts and desires, and in certain moments when we are experiencing such emotions, that makes us human. To be human is a journey of self-analysis into our past, thoughts that leave us feeling empty, and thoughts that make us feel alive. To be human is to look into our behavior, unconscious mind, and soul and be enlightened by life and the world.
However, the more we are addicted to technology, the more our humanism is robbed. We spend our days and nights on technology while pushing people away – much like a workaholic. We focus so much on technology that we forget to spend time growing personally and nurturing our psychological needs and relationships. We think we are advancing and moving towards something greater in life, but then we lose touch with the things that matter the most – human connections.
Life is full of predictions, but predictions surrounding AI differ because it is not a natural disaster or war that will change humanity; it is an advanced technology that humans have created and not contained or had proper oversight. Since teaching psychology, I have been motivated and driven to become an expert in the field of psychology and in teaching methods based on how the brain learns. Becoming an expert I wanted to be took much hard work and years. A while back, I wrote an article for the Teaching of Psychology journal to try and promote discussion about the psychology of merging with AI (Singularity). However, my article was declined because it did not meet the magazine’s goal. They only wanted to discuss implementing AI tools in the classroom. In doing so, the field is missing the elephant in the room. Back to my point, there were numerous struggles to become an expert. At times, it seemed that days, months, and years passed quickly as I was focused on work. However, looking back now, I did not fully appreciate the struggles, the time, and the effort put into becoming an expert on the topics, but now I do. I value the learning process, the dedication, the motivation, and the grit and resilience required to get from being a novice to where I am now. I would not trade that for anything.
Without the mental and financial struggles, where would I be today? If society had AI during those years and I had relied on it instead of learning things for myself, I would have robbed myself of personal growth and potential. Every time I created and developed new lessons for my classes, it made me more intelligent, and it was rewarding. Actual learning can be rewarding, and we can experience positive emotions of intrinsic satisfaction.
We can “reinvent human intelligence” (using Kurzweil’s words), but it will be at the cost of handing the learning process over to AI. When we leave ourselves out of the learning process, we give the power over to another entity—in this case, a non-human entity. Imagine people giving their power of being human over to AI. The more we do this, the more we strip humanity of its Zeitgeist, individualism, and freedom of thought. The fewer real experiences we have and learn from them, the more discontent we may become and the less intelligent we may become.
I have to question why computer scientists are working so hard to end the things that make us human. You cannot convince me that hooking human brains to the cloud or replacing the human brain with a digital one will allow people to experience life any fuller than what can occur naturally. How can humans have more autonomy and learn through life experiences what it is like to be human hooked up to the cloud or to brain-computer interfacing? Ultimately, I want my life to be experiences with people and memories of life’s experiences, allowing us to be human, not experiences and memories of AI that remove us from our humanism.
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